boudoir

Borrowed from French boudoir, from bouder (“to sulk”).

• (General American) IPA^(key): /buˈdwɑɹ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈbuːdwɑː/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)

boudoir (plural boudoirs)

1. A woman's private sitting room, dressing room, or bedroom.
   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XI, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 118:

     The Duchesse's boudoir was fitted up in a style of luxury utterly different from anything before familiar to the Carraras.

   • 1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 154:

     Dorcas, faithful to her “young gentlemen,” denied strenuously that it could have been John’s voice she heard, and resolutely declared, in the teeth of everything, that it was Mr. Inglethorp who had been in the boudoir with her mistress.

   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:

     I found her in her boudoir getting outside a dish of tea and a crumpet.

Strictly refers only to a woman’s room, but sometimes used informally or humorously to refer to the vaginal canal.^[1]

• cabinet, study (male equivalent)

• withdrawing room, drawing room

From bouder +‎ -oir.

• IPA^(key): /bu.dwaʁ/

• Audio (France (Toulouse)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Agen)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Vosges)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Somain)):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -waʁ

boudoir m (plural boudoirs)

1. boudoir (woman's private sitting room)
   • 1857, Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary […]‎^[1], Paris: Michel Lévy Frères:

     L'église, comme un boudoir gigantesque, se disposait autour d'elle; les voûtes s'inclinaient pour recueillir dans l'ombre la confession de son amour; les vitraux resplendissaient pour illuminer son visage, et les encensoirs allaient brûler pour qu'elle apparût comme un ange, dans la fumée des parfums.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. sponge, ladyfinger

• → Bulgarian: будоар (budoar)
• → English: boudoir
• → German: Boudoir
• → Greek: μπουντουάρ (bountouár)
• → Hungarian: budoár
• → Macedonian: будоар (budoar)
• → Polish: buduar
• → Romanian: budoar
• → Russian: будуа́р (buduár)
  • → Georgian: ბუდუარი (buduari)
• → Serbo-Croatian: будоар
• → Swedish: budoar
• → Turkish: buduvar
• → Ukrainian: будуа́р (buduár)

• “boudoir”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012